Your tax dollars fruved

The “Get Fruved” campaign, funded by your federal tax dollars, features college students dressed up as fruits and vegetables who pretend to stalk students in their dorms, reports the Daily Caller. In one video, a student-funded pilot, the male student in the grape costume approaches a female student and says, “You’re looking grape today!”

For about 80 or 90 years, the Hayekians and the Keynesians have been arguing over whether or not the government could do the most good by wading in and try to control the economy or by leaving it to market forces. For the most part, the Keynesians have been winning, since they can show that indeed, there are certain well-studied government programs that have demonstrated that they exert some positive effect.

What often doesn’t come into the debate, however, is the outright ineptness of so many (most?) government programs. Sure, IN THEORY, a government program might help, but in practice the idea is often laughable.

Here we have one more laughable than most, but it will still burn through some millions of dollars, probably with no measurable benefit at all. No one will even try to measure its benefit, no one will be held accountable and every bureaucrat involved will have the incentive to chalk it up as a win despite the complete lack of data.

Even if a government program could be shown to have a positive effect, one would also have to include the opportunity cost of the program, i.e., what else the $$$ could have been used for which might have benefited society even more. Fat chance of that happening.